Chevy’s Freedom Over Texas explodes over downtown Houston

Marene Gustin Contributing writer

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, July 3, 2008

Country music, Chevy trucks and the biggest fireworks spectacular in Texas is what’s in store for about 100,000 folks expected to attend the July 4 festival at Houston’s lush Eleanor Tinsley Park along the bayou.

2008 Chevy’s Freedom Over Texas with Fireworks presented by Shell starts at 4 p.m. with tons of food and fun, interactive family activities, military displays, NASCAR cars, a racing simulator, face painting, jugglers, volleyball and beer. And then it gets better.

The live concert line up includes stars Sara Evans, Jo Dee Messina, The Shirelles and Texas’ own Miranda Lambert.

“I’m so excited to play this show,” the little girl with the big voice from Longview, Texas e-mailed from the road. “I’ve played Houston before, everything from the clubs like the Firehouse, to the Houston Rodeo, but this will be my first July 4 in Houston.”

And Lambert, the singer of the hit “Kerosene” and the Academy of Country Music Award’s 2008 Album of the Year “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is excited about the festival.

“I cannot hardly wait for the Fourth of July. I hope to get some good food and I hear the fireworks are going to be out of this world, I’m definitely sticking around for that!,” she said.

As will the live crowd and about a million other people watching on TV around the state (locally the event will be carried on KTRK-TV-Channel 13). That’s because the fireworks show, produced by world-renowned Pyro Spectaculars North, is billed as the largest land-based fireworks festival in the country. Barge-based fireworks programs, like the one on the Charles River in Boston and Macy’s in the East River, are bigger, but just how big will Houston’s be?

“There are more than 1,700 cues that my computer fires,” pyrotechnician Paula Craig said. “Each cue sends one to 250 shots into the air.”

Which explains why, a full two weeks before July 4, semis from Pyro Spectaculars North started pulling into the city’s parking Lot H near Eleanor Tinsley Park and the crew began the elaborate set up. But Craig is an old hand at this, having started at the tender age 10.

“Our little town fire department always did a show on the Fourth,” she remembered. “They were setting up on our property and I just marched right down there and they put me to work.”

Of course, at that age, she was hauling hay bales and hammering nails, not setting off rockets to rock and roll. But, she had found her calling and went on to get a degree in theatrical lighting and then a job with Disney, where she was trained as a pyrotechnician, and she’s been one ever since.

While Craig’s been around the country setting up huge displays, Houston holds a special place in her heart.

“My first job was 11 years ago at the Power of Houston and I’ve been here every year since then,” she said

This year Craig will start firing up her board around 9:30 p.m., after Sara Evans’ concert ends on the main stage.

The show will be 17 minutes of fabulous fireworks, choreographed to music, exploding over the bayou. Fireworks will explode inside of fireworks, creating moving patriotic patterns and even — one of Craig’s favorites — smiley faces in the sky.

For those not at the park, or watching on TV, the display can still be seen from around Houston, from Galleria area high-rises to Memorial homes.

This July 4 festival will be the city’s biggest yet, one that Mayor Bill White said will make “Houston the number one Fourth destination in the country.”

Even fireworks expert Craig thinks it’ll be the best.

“If I didn’t have to work this show,” she said, “I would bring my family here, hot dog in hand and be sitting on the hill watching it!”